Battelle, Gillmor, Anderson…to the end.

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The economics of the long tail.

Moving deeper into Anderson’s book, he is beginning to explain the economy of the long tail and what it means for the economic future of our society. He explains this in three points. The first is that of the changing ways of who decides what is popular. The second is the long tail economics, highlighted by the changing of the traditional 80/20 rule. The third is what exactly makes up the short head and why is it important. I’m gonna try something a little different today, because i noticed i have a tendency to just summarize the chapters, and we have all read them so there is not point in that, so i am instead going to highlight the parts that i found particularly interesting and my thoughts on those parts.

In order to explain how the tastemakers are changing in the new long tail world, he uses examples of three musical groups with different stories to help explain this. The first was the story of Bonnie McKee and how the record label thought that they would market her music to an older audience, but after doing research, found that her music was actually listened to by a much younger audience than they had predicted. The next, the story of My Chemical Romance is a story that has been retold many times over the past couple years. In this version, the band worked up a large fanbase by touring and promoting their first release on an independent label. This story is all too familiar to me as it was my best friend who worked the publicity on that first record, essentially helping to catapult them to the success they would eventually get. In recent years, more and more independent artists have been snatched up by major labels just on the fact that they already have their market to sell another record too. (Although it can be debated that this is mainly how the industry has always worked, it seems like it has been happening much more frequently lately). Finally, he told the story of Birdmonster, a small independent band that was working their asses off to get the exposure to their fans, but wisely did so by using services such as CDBaby and Cinderblock for distribution. The second half of the chapter explains why filters are so important to the success of many of the products that find themselves at the end of the long tail, trying to make their way up to the top. I particularly liked when he talked about different pre-filters and post-filters. This seemed to make a lot of sense, and was not really a way that i looked at it before.

The main focus of the next chapter is the “death of the 80/30 rule”. In this chapter, i particularly liked his explanation of the dvd retail economics. My previous job was working at an small dvd only retail store in the suburbs of Chicago, so this made much sense to me. When he explains the idea of “loss leaders”. We would constantly have customers coming into the store on tuesdays wondering why we were selling the latest blockbusters for $20, when the Best Buy down the street had it for $15. I would have to politely explain to them that we paid $18 for the movie, so in order to stay in business, we had to sell it for that much. Sometimes I would even have to go so far as to jokingly explain to them that I didn’t have any washers or dryers to sell to them to make up the difference. They usually got the hint at that point. See, the store that i worked for (one of a kind in my opinion) was essentially a retail version of the long tail of dvd. We were the only place in the region that carried the hard to find stuff that you couldn’t get at the big box retailers. In fact, on release days we often sold 10-20 copies of some random 1940’s film noir than Spy Kids 3D, or something like that. People would come from all around to be able to physically browse through the aisles of hard to find titles. Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent, but the 80/20 rule is changing drastically. Now that online retailers are able to carry much more long tail product, the revenues are increasing for that product so that more of it is making up their sales. Anderson does an excellent job at showing this throughout the chapter.

Finally, in the next chapter, he talks about the powerlaws and the short head of the tail, the part where the popular stuff is. He does this by explaining how important shelf space to brick and mortar business. Although I was aware of its importance, i was not aware of the extent of how much retail actually cares about what is placed where and why. His example of the fact that a 12″ by 12″ shelf needs to account for $100-150 every month just to “pay its way” was interesting to learn, and probably something i will think about next time i am in a store browsing. When he explains the Dewey Decimal System, and the idea of having to decide where exactly to catalog a book, i was able to relate. I’ll keep this example short, but back in the DVD store days, we would constantly have to decide where to file a movie, based on category. Many of them were way off in my opinion, but luckily we had a computer system that told us exactly where it was located in the store, so it was easy to help the customer find. As far as libraries go, the system can be both helpful and hurtful.  Just browsing around the call number of a book that I like often results in books that would have no interest to me.  However, what i find myself most often doing, is using my Amazon recommendations to find new books at the library in subjects that interest me.  Much like Anderson’s comment about how this book could be located in business, technology, economics, or culture, the books that i find are often scattered all over the library and not in one particular place.  Using both Google’s recommendation system, as well as the tags that they organize by, i have already found and read two different books in the past few weeks “The Pirate’s Dilemma” and “Wired Shut“, both in totally different areas in the library, despite their similar topics.

There is so much more that could be discussed on the topics that Anderson highlighted in these chapters, but it is a nice day outside, so i’m gonna go outside and finish the book.  Until next week.

The Long Tail goes further…

In the next section of The Long Tail that I read for this week, Chris Anderson goes even deeper into the theory behind his idea, as well as the implications of it shown by several examples of how it applies to real places as well as cyberspaces.

In chapter four, he outlines the three forces of the long tail as: 1) Democratizing the tools of production, 2) cutting the costs of consumption by democratizing distribution, and 3) connecting supply and demand. What these essentially mean is that as the producers make it easier to contribute to the production of media, and the websites make it all available in one place, and the recommendation lists help the consumer to decide what is good and what is bad, the long tail makes its full effect known. He also outlines six themes of the long tail age: 1) there are far more niche goods than hits, 2) the costs of reaching those niches is now falling dramatically, 3) filters can drive demand down the tail, 4) once there’s sorted variety, the demand curve flattens, 5) there are so many niche products that collectively can comprise a market rivaling the hits, and 6) the result is the natural shape of demand is revealed.

The next chapters provides clear examples of how the power of many people working together can be related to the long tail. He begins with the ways in which amateurs are now interconnecting with professionals. The story of the amateur astronomer that was able to see the first supernova witnessed by the naked eye in almost four centuries shows how not only is it up to the professionals to do the work, now amateurs can do just as important stuff. He explains this as a key moment in the arrival of a Pro-Am era, essentially meaning that the pros are working together with the amateurs in collaboration. Next, to show how this works for the average person, is the example of Wikipedia. In this area, where anyone can edit the information, creates the largest encyclopedia in human history. It is here where the average college student, such as myself, can collaborate on editing an article about any topic, and perhaps even teaching each other something in the process. This is the long tail of knowledge, where not only is it the scholars that are able to share the information they know with others, now even I can.

The sixth chapter begins to show examples of the aggregators that are making the long tail possible. Those that he foccuses on fall into five categories. 1)Physical goods, 2)digital goods, 3)advertising and services, 4) information, and 5) communities and user-generated content. The ways in which the long tail applies to this realm is that space is no longer as important as it once was. For a small store, it was only possible to stock so much product, but with the rise of Internet music stores, now it is just bytes waiting to be downloaded, with far less space needed for the software than would have previously been necessary. This is where the long tail will continue to grow. I can go onto eMusic, or iTunes and download an album that years ago I would have spent weeks trying to find or special order through a local music store. Not only that, but if I want to buy the physical product instead of the digital product, eBay or Amazon will most likely have it in stock. This is an exciting development. I cannot imagine how it would be today without these access points.

An introduction to the long tail…

As we have moved on from the journalistic side of new media and the Internet, now we explore the how the business side is changing. In his book, The Long Tail, Chris Anderson explains how almost every way in which commerce once worked is changing due to the rise of availability and the Internet.

In chapter 1, he outlines exactly what he means by “the long tail”. He begins by explaining how a book written ten years earlier suddenly regained popularity after a similar book was published and subsequently gained popularity. He states that this is something that would not have happened in years past because people would not have had the ability to recommend this long undiscovered work. But now with the Internet, and the birth of Amazon.com, it is now incredibly easy to find undiscovered books and other media which would have long disappeared otherwise. Next, he moves onto exactly what “the long tail” is. He uses music download site Rhapsody to outline exactly how it works. Essentially, “the long tail” means that the most used media will represent only a small percentage of what is out there. The tail continues on, but never reaches zero, as the niche media is still used by someone out there. He argues that the rise of the Internet has given a market to these niche audiences where everything gets downloaded, read, or purchased at least once. There are infinite examples of this out there.

In chapter 2, Anderson explains how the music industry has changed since the rise of the Internet. Building off the fact that he previously explained how new technologies have allowed for easier access to unheard and lesser known artists, now this is affecting the recording industry incredibly. Now that people have access to other choices, they are becoming less and less likely to go out and buy the full length albums of homogenized crap being offered. Instead, they go out on their own and either purchase just the songs they like, or check out something they would otherwise never have heard of. From a personal perspective, I can’t remember the last album that I bought before hearing it first. With MP3 blogs and other ways of sampling an album before you purchase something, it had definitely changed the amount of crap that I have bought because I thought I might like it. This is a good thing as I don’t waste as much money on stuff that I ended up not liking after purchasing, but it also has the negative affect of the fact that I am discovering much more stuff that I would have otherwise not heard, resulting in even more purchasing before. However, I feel that this is a good thing.

In chapter 3, he moves onto a short history of the long tail by explaining how previous ventures have laid the road to what we are seeing today. I found this chapter interesting because I was not that familiar with how important Sears Roebuck Co. was in getting the mailorder market going. I was very impressed with the idea that the catalog of 1897 has 200,000 products. That is an incredible amount of products for someone from that time to choose from, and the fact that they could be offered for much cheaper than in local stores, including the shipping costs, is even more incredible. This can easily be compared to the Amazon.com that we have today. I have been ordering books from there for several years, and I find it amazing that each day they seem to be offering even newer products, such as food, clothing, shoes, etc. They truly offer everything. Even more incredible is the recommendation system. Just from ordering the books for this semester for a couple of weeks, they have recommended several books that seem really interesting that I will probably check out when I have the time. I would never have known these books existed if it weren’t for buying my school books on Amazon.

We the Media, the end.

In the concluding chapters of We the Media, Dan Gillmor finishes up his arguments for how grassroots journalism and citizen media is changing the traditional ways of journalism that has flourished in years past. The three final chapters cover legal issues, copyright law, and finally a summation of all of the changes covered in the book.

Regarding the legal issues, there are many. The argument that Gillmor makes is that laws regarding libel, jurisdiction, free speech, and linking need to be reevaluated in this new age of citizen media. The traditional laws cannot continue to be applied to new media in the same way in which they applied to traditional journalism. I agreed with him particularly when he spoke about jurisdiction issues. It is incredibly hard to know the laws of various regions around the world when writing something to the web. It should not be that local governments can charge a writer from far away with a crime when they are not located in that region. This is one of the key elements that will need to be evaluated in the future when trying to decide how to govern the web will be decided. Additionally, the issue of legality of links is another area that will need to be evaluated. I am not quite sure about my stance on this issue. Although I think that there should be some way to regulate this, it is tough. It can already be seen by the amount of blogs that link to mp3 files that can easily be found by a Google search. Although the blogger is not actually hosting the file, they are linking to a place you can download it from already located on the net. Should they be legally responsible for linking to it? I am not quite sure.

Next, Gillmor tackles the issue of copyright law in the age of new media. Some of the issues covered included cookies, copyright, and the regulation by the FCC. When he spoke about the creation of cookie by Netscape in the 1990s, I couldn’t help but think what a huge invasion of privacy this was. I have always tried to actively keep track of the cookies on my machine, constantly having to delete the ones that are not from legit websites. Many websites do not work properly, if it all, if cookies are turned off which keeps me from being able to turn of cookies completely. However, I am constantly amazed at how quick I can have tons of new cookies that I have no clue where they came from. Next, in his discussion of intellectual property laws, I was not surprised to find that Disney is behind the constantly changing lengths. I agree that they are “thwarting innovation” in that less and less movies, books, and music will be coming into the public domain in the future restricting new interpretations. Finally, in the discussion of the large media companies war on restricting use of product is a controversial subject. I do not like the idea that one day “big corporations and governments will know every copyrighted work you read, listen to, and watch”. The fact that these companies can choose how and when and where we are able to consume our media show how different today is from just ten years ago. I fear the idea that I can buy an album from Itunes, and if Apple so chooses, can decide that they no longer want me to be able to play that song any more and turn off or change the DRM. For this reason, I am glad that DRM is being used less and less from music download sites.

Finally, Gillmor ends his book by explaining how he was trying to show the reader the changes that technology are having on journalism, news making, and the audiences. I think he succeeded quite well in this. I have learned a lot of things that I was not familiar with before, such as RSS, and the importance of blogs in general. I am sure that I will remember many of these things in the future, and will continue to evaluate where we are in this changing media world.

We the Media, Chapters 7-9

Chapters 7-9 of Gillmor’s book detail the ways in which the bloggers are changing the media landscape. In chapter 7, he talks about the new bloggers and the ways in which the business model for media is changing in their world. In chapter 8, he discusses the changes in technologies that are allowing these changes. Finally, in chapter 9, he discusses trolls and understanding what you are reading on the web.

Gillmor’s discussion of Zeyed’s Healing Iraq website shows how the people who used to be the consumers of media are beginning to stand up and do their own reporting in places where they feel more coverage is need. The rise of the ability and ease of blogging has allowed many people who were previously doing this to get more attention. The impact that they are having is immense. He also shows how these bloggers are beginning to have a much larger audience and oftentimes becoming a new business model. The discussion of Rex Hammock being able to infiltrate the meeting with George W. Bush because they weren’t aware that he was going to blog about what was discussed is important because I think that the government are going to begin realizing this. Next, I was particularly interested in the ways in which he describes alternative media as flourishing in this new media web. The fact that it is so easy to create a blog on the Internet allows for ideas that were previously difficult to get out to a mass audience to flourish. One example that he gives is that of Democracy Now! I have been an active listener/watcher of this program for several years now and it is only because of the changes in the Internet that this is possible. I started out by listening to the podcasts that were made available on itunes. Occasionally, I would download or watch the video directly from the website. This is an example of how a program that would be otherwise difficult to hear is made readily available to mass audiences.

In the next chapter, Gillmor discusses several laws that explain what is happening with the Internet. First, Moore’s Law which states that “the density of transistors on a given piece of silicon will double every 18-24 months”. This helps to explain the ways in which the Internet is exponentially changing. Next, Metcalfe’s Law states that “the value of a communication network is the square of the number of nodes”. This would explain how having more and more people connected to the Internet, increases its value greatly over just having a couple connected to each other. The amount of voices available is incredible. Finally, Reed’s Law increases the numbers in a similar way, by factorial. Another way in which the technologies are allowing for these changes is in RSS. Since we originally read and discussed RSS, I have begun to use Bloglines to track some of the websites I regularly visited as well as new ones I learned about in the class discussion. I have found that I have an incredible amount of information available to me which was much more difficult to follow before RSS. Now I can load one website and get regular updates instead of moving from page to page like before.

In chapter 9, Gillmor talks about trust. Essentially what he is attempting to explain here, is that you need to be an active participant and reader and truly understand what you are reading about. If something does not make sense, you should read a different source to help explain it. Often, there might be conflicting points of view which will require the reader to know what they are reading and dig to find out the truth. He also describes what are known as trolls, or people who participate in the web only to be controversial. Oftentimes they will participate in forums or comment sections on blogs for the sole purpose of disseminating misinformation or lies. One needs to understand that trolls are out there and to be aware of what they are doing.

We the Media, Pt. 2

In the second part of his book We the Media, Dan Gillmor begins to explain some of the political and journalistic effects brought about by the changes to the Internet brought about by the Read-Write web.

In chapter 3 he outlines how important blogs are becoming to companies as well as the idea of celebrity bloggers. He quotes Robert Scoble’s manifesto for corporate bloggers which essentially states that they should tell the truth, post fast on news, have a thick skin, and talk to the grassroots first. He explains that because of the nature of the Internet and bloggers today, the information will get out there whether the company likes it or not, so they should just acknowledge both good things and bad things right away so as to become a more trusted source. Personally, I would truly trust a company more if they admitted their faults. Second, he describes how celebrities are now using the blog medium to get their views across. He says that we should “think of it as the evolution from the celebrity as manufactured product to the celebrity as something more genuine in a human sense” (78). Finally, at the end of the chapter he outlines ten rules for using tomorrow’s new media for PR/Marketing folks.

In chapter 4 he shows how blogs and new media are rapidly changing the political process. By showing the ways in which Howard Dean used the Internet to gain support in his election campaign, he explains how this use has been both successful and unsuccessful. But the fact remains that since this book was written, most everything he thought would happen involving the increased use of the Internet in political campaigns has come to happen. Quick glances at Obama’s or McCain’s websites show how many of the methods discussed are included. Most importantly, the role of fundraising via the Internet has increased drastically since the last presidential election. It will be interesting to see where this will go by the time of the 2012 presidential election.

In chapter 5 Gillmor explains how the concept of journalist is changing. He claims that the role of a professional journalist will always be important to bringing the news to the people due to their ability to fact check and dig deeper than bloggers have been able to up to this point. I would agree with him on this point. Although many of the famous bloggers are able to dig up information and break news stories, the traditional media will still play a large role in getting the detailed information.

We the Media (Me the Media?)

In his opening chapters of his book, We the Media, Dan Gillmor outlines many of the ways in which the Internet is changing the ways that we communicate with each other. Additionally, the journalistic impacts are also covered in great detail.

In chapter 1, Gillmor briefly covers the long history of how events in the past have paved the ways for the technological innovations of today. From the pamphleteers and newspaper writers of the 19^th century, to the blogs of today, the ways in which people get there news have changed.

In chapter 2, Gillmor begins to explain how all the technologies that have recently come to being work and why we use them to communicate. The technologies and software that he outlines include: mail lists and forums, weblogs, wikis, SMS, mobile-connected cameras, internet “broadcasting”, peer to peer, and finally RSS. I find it fascinating the amount of blogs that are out there, and the fact that I am now writing one. He seems right when he says that “it’s safe to say that several million people have tried blogging” (31). Although this is my first try at it, I am sure that there are countless people who start writing one and then forget about it never to return again. Hopefully I will continue doing so long after this class has completed. I also find the ideas that wikis are now being used within companies for sharing information between users to be a good thing. Many large companies that have employees spread out across a large office, or even around the world, now have a system that allows easy collaboration between each other.

The ideas of internet “broadcasting” have truly come of age in the recent years. With podcasting and internet radio, we as consumers are now able to listen to our favorite radio shows whenever we want, and even listen to shows that we might learn to love that would not otherwise get out over the airwaves. I frequently download podcasts of my favorite radio shows since I am rarely around a radio. It allows me freedom to listen when and where I want (which is usually on a bus or train). The fact that P2P is so important in the future of the internet is outlined in this chapter as well. I have always believed that the power of file transfers over multiple computers could be the future of the internet, but unfortunately, many view it as a negative thing due to all the “illegal” activity that it can be associated with. Additionally, I found it interesting when Gillmor quotes Chris Pirillo as saying “RSS suddenly makes the Internet work the way it should. Instead of you searching for everything, the Internet comes to you on your terms” (39). I have not used RSS yet, but might begin to use it so that I will not have to check so many websites every morning.

The Wealth of Networks (Yochai Benkler)

In reading the introduction and third chapter of Yochai Benkler’s book “The Wealth of Networks”, he gives many clear (and some not so clear) explanations for how and why the increased use of the Internet and networks are changing the economic ways we look at these technologies. It was in the third chapter, where Benkler used examples of some of his theories where the reading got interesting.

Benkler claims that there are three dimensions in which networked information improves the practical capacities of individuals. These are (1) improving their capacity to do more for and by themselves, (2) enhancing their capacity to do more in loose commonality with others, and (3) improving the capacity of individuals to do more in organizations that operate outside the market sphere (ch. 1, pg. 6). With these, he is showing that there are several different ways in which people interact with networks. It is now becoming more so that the third dimension is the commonality within our present society.

His first example of peer production and sharing outlined some of the key concepts of the open source movement. Much like last weeks readings, as well as the documentary Revolution OS, I have come to further understand the incredible importance that open source has played in the development, as well as deployment, of this system towards software today.

His second example of Wikipedia as a place in which users come together to gather their knowledge in one place shows several ways in which this works. He claims that Wikipedia requires self discipline, which it does. Over the past couple of semesters at UIC, I have learned that professors have a clear dislike/distrust of Wikipedia as source material for any sort of research paper. They often claim that you cannot verify that the information is correct. While I agree with this viewpoint in a certain respect, I have also always believed that most of the time if the information is incorrect, it will be corrected very quickly by other users. While this will not always make what you are reading perfect, I believe that it does improve the availability of information in one easy to find place. As with most things you read, you should be very skeptical of what you read, and know where to go to find differing viewpoints or facts. I think the big problem that will need to be addressed in the next few years in regards to academic use of Wikipedia, is that of attribution, since the ways in which we attribute information we get is changing rapidly as the society moves from one of single-author information, to one of multi-user generated information.

Another example that Benkler uses to advance his idea, is that of Slashdot as a relevance/accreditation system. In this, the users collectively decide how important something is. I have only referred to Slashdot occasionally, but the ideas of moderators helping to decide how important various articles and responses are is an incredibly interesting move forward. Now, the collective minds of many users are helping to decide what is important, and since the same users can set their preferences to decide what they will see (based on the ratings given by moderators), it becomes that much easier to personalize the content. Another example of a similar system is that of Fark, which allows senior members to submit stories and rate them, with the approved articles going on to the main page for the general public to read.

Finally, Benkler briefly addresses the concepts of “processing sharing” like SETI@home (as well as many offshoots) and P2P technologies. I think the idea of using people’s computers to solve scientific as well as medical problems to be one that could have great benefit in the future. I know people that leave their computers on overnight, unused, and this is a great opportunity to put it to good use. Secondly, the increased use of P2P as well as Bittorrent technologies to transfer information is having a great (and controversial) change on several different industries (ex. Music/Television/Film). It is a shame that these companies were not able to recognize a great thing and acknowledge near the beginning of these technologies that the future would be changing their distribution models. Perhaps if they had gotten on in the beginning, they would have been able to come up with models to still make profits. Since they didn’t, people learned that it was easy to obtain their music, television, and movies free over these technologies. As the past has shown us, once users learn how to use a technology one way, it is hard to convince them to pay for something that they have been getting for free.

But I’m sure I will have an opportunity to discuss this issue further as the semester progresses.

A few words on the past, present, and future of the machine.

Now that we have finished Battelle’s The Search, I am excited to move onto something other than Google, but as I found out, it all ties together. In the beginning of attempting to read these two articles, they both seemed as if they were full of technical information that I would not be able to understand completely. However after carefully reading most of it, I found that I was able to come to somewhat of an understanding about their contents.

First, Kevin Kelly’s article about the past, present, and future of the Internet was the more readable one. He ties in how in the beginning, most people did not see a future in the new technology of the Internet. He goes onto explain that the immense changes that have occurred over the past 10 years (now 13), show how quickly technologies, as well as acceptance of those technologies can change. I found his statement about how many pages exist on the Internet (more than 600 billion) to be incredible. I have never seen an estimation of the number out there before. Also, I find his prediction of the future of the Internet to be quite intriguing. His comparison of the Internet as a “planet-sized computer” to the human brain is great. Just like O’Reilly, he proposes that in the future, desktop operating systems will be a thing of the past as everything is based off of the Internet. Finally, I really enjoyed his idea that we are alive at a moment in time that where humanity, as well as the way we communicate, is changing incredibly. I have had conversations with friends where I brought up this exact point that we are living in a time when the change is so profound that it is unlike anything in recent history. We are truly making a large machine in which all of the information in our society, as well as others around the world, will be linked to each other so that everything is available to everyone.

Next, Tim O’Reilly’s article about the open source movement and how it relates to the development of the Internet and software was a little tougher to comprehend. Luckily, the little knowledge that I do have on the topic helped me to pick out key parts. First, I am composing this in OpenOffice, so I understood what open source software was. When I bought my computer, it did not come with Microsoft Office, and I didn’t feel like buying it, so I found OpenOffice. I can say that I am incredibly pleased with this alternative. The only problem I ever have is making sure that I save the file as a “.doc” file if I am sending it to professors or others. He highlights three trends that open source is an expression of: (1) The commoditization of software, (2) network-enable collaboration, and (3) software customizability. Ultimately, I think that what he is getting at is that most people fail to realize the importance of open source in the development in the Internet, and also that in the future, there will no longer be such a thing as a Windows operating system and that the likelihood of a universal Internet operating system is becoming much more likely.